White Elephant: A Gift Exchange 2022

White Elephant is a negotiation game featuring a gift economy system. In White Elephant, you pass gifts around and collect the most items you can. Be the one who scores the most items in your group of friends.

The deck of gifts contains an assortment of cards with one, two, or three gifts, among six different types. The game starts by randomly determining play order by shuffling and dealing out the player aid cards, which have the numbers one through six on the back. The play order stays the same throughout play. Players create two score sheets, one for each of the left and right hand neighbors at the table. At the end of the game, each player will receive points for the number of gifts shown on the cards they collect for each of the scoring categories on the score sheet. Before play, decide whether the play will be "generous" or "greedy."

Beginning with the first player and proceeding in order, turn gifts face-up from the top of the draw pile until there are six or more gift icons showing. Choose who will get which cards. In "generous" mode, you must give away all but one card (but may give away all of them). In "greedy" mode, you must give away at least one card (but may give away as many more as you like, up to all of them). Players negotiate and make suggestions about who should get which cards, but ultimately, the current player decides. You cannot refuse a gift.

At the end of the round, count up the number of each kind of icon, and score points for each according to how your neighbors filled out the two score sheets they passed to you, except that you don't score any points for the type of icon you collected the most.